Moreau, like a prudent man, had, since 1817, invested his salary and his profits year by year in the funds, feathering his nest in absolute secrecy. He had refused various business speculations on the plea of want of money, and affected poverty so well to the Count that he had obtained two scholarships for his boys at the Collège Henri IV. And, at this moment, Moreau owned a hundred and twenty thousand francs in reduced consuls, then paying five percent, and quoted at eighty. These unacknowledged hundred and twenty thousand francs, and his farm at Champagne, to which he had made additions, amounted to a fortune of about two hundred and eighty thousand francs, yielding an income of sixteen thousand francs a year.
This, then, was the steward’s position at the time when the Count wished to purchase the farm of les Moulineaux, of which the possession had become indispensable to his comfort. This farm comprehended ninety-six plots of land, adjoining, bordering, and marching with the estate of Presles, in many cases indeed completely surrounded by the Count’s property, like a square in the middle of a chessboard, to say nothing of the dividing hedges and ditches, which gave rise to constant disputes when a tree was to be cut down if it stood on debatable ground. Any other Minister of State would have fought twenty lawsuits a year over the lands of les Moulineaux.
Old Léger wanted to buy them only to sell to the Count; and to make the thirty or forty thousand francs of profit he hoped for, he had long been endeavoring to come to terms with Moreau. Only three days before this critical Saturday, farmer Léger, driven by press of circumstances, had, standing out in the fields, clearly demonstrated to the steward how he could invest the Comte de Sérizy’s money at two and a half percent in purchasing other plots, that is to say, could, as usual, seem to be serving the Count’s interests while pocketing the bonus of forty thousand francs offered him on the transaction.
“And on my honor,” said the steward to his wife as they went to bed that evening, “if I can make fifty thousand francs on the purchase of les Moulineaux—for the Count will give me ten thousand at least—we will retire to l’Isle-Adam to the Pavillon de Nogent.”
This pavillon is a charming little house built for a lady by the Prince de Conti in a style of prodigal elegance.
“I should like that,” said his wife. “The Dutchman who has been living there has done it up very handsomely, and he will let us have it for thirty thousand francs, since he is obliged to go back to the Indies.”
“It is but a stone’s throw from Champagne,” Moreau went on. “I have hopes of being able to buy the farm and mill at Mours for a hundred thousand francs. We should thus have ten thousand francs a year out of land, one of the prettiest places in all the valley, close to our farm lands, and six thousand francs a year still in the funds.”
“And why should you not apply to be appointed Justice of the Peace at l’Isle-Adam? It would give us importance and fifteen hundred francs a year more.”
“Yes, I have thought of that.”
In this frame of mind, on learning that his patron was coming to Presles, and wished him to invite Margueron to dinner on Saturday, Moreau at once sent off a messenger, who delivered a note to the Count’s valet too late in the evening for it to be delivered to Monsieur de Sérizy; but Augustin laid it, as was usual, on his master’s desk. In this letter Moreau begged the Count not to take so much trouble; to leave the matter to his management. By his account Margueron no longer wished to sell the lands in one lot, but talked of dividing the farm into ninety-six plots. This, at any rate, he must be persuaded to give up; and perhaps, said the steward, it might be necessary to find someone to lend his name as a screen.
Now, everybody has enemies. The steward of Presles and his wife had given offence to a retired officer named de Reybert and his wife. From stinging words and pinpricks they had come to daggers drawn. Monsieur de Reybert breathed nothing but vengeance; he aimed at getting Moreau deposed from his place and filling it himself. These two ideas are twins. Hence the agent’s conduct, narrowly watched for two years past, had no secrets from the Reyberts. At the very time when Moreau was despatching his letter to Monsieur de Sérizy, Reybert had sent his wife to Paris. Madame de Reybert so strongly insisted on seeing the Count, that, being refused at nine in the evening, when he was going to bed, she was shown into his study by seven o’clock next morning.
“Monseigneur,” said she to the Minister, “my husband and I are incapable of writing an anonymous letter. I am Madame de Reybert, née de Corroy. My husband has a pension of no more than six hundred francs a year, and we live at Presles, where your land-steward exposes us
